Category: English

We are approaching the final month for the year 2014. As such, we will conclude this year in a month time (at the time of this writing). For the past eleven months, what are our progress, particularly in various domain of life – work, spiritual, family and friends, relationship?

At the beginning of the year, we usually will craft some basic plan on what to achieve. Some of you might go deep and write a very comprehensive plan. Nevertheless, planning is easy to do, just jot whatever we tend to have next year and place the hope that we will get those without much hiccups.

Life is not that easy, everyone knows this. Perfection and idealist is what we wish, but the reality is bitter than sweet. During planning stage, we put certain assumption and these assumptions are idealist in nature – not counting factors that are beyond our control. Act of God you may suggest, but I think is merely our own act that will constitute what will happen.

Everyone has his or her own perception, or reality on people, situation or material. Perception is unique for each of us – exact similarity is very rare if none at all. Issues will prevail when someone perception ‘clash’ with others and create what we label as ‘conflict’. Conflict, misunderstanding, accusations are just clash of perception (plus facts and figures).

It is almost impossible to avoid clash in our life, regardless in which domain (work, relationship, etc.), just the severity differ depending on situation. Clash is not good, it might work in good faith to unleash whatever or whichever bad feeling we have, but in long term, in will cultivate stress, displeasure, inaccurate perception. Bad feeling, in my opinion, is just a corrupted process in our mind and it will get into normal sooner or later. But, if decision is made during bad feeling, the consequence might be disasterous.

Regardless, all of it starts with perception. To have a positive perception, we have to know, to understand, to transpire the ‘real reality’ and not reality that we get from others. Others’ might have distorted reality and using that as our guidance will not make us better, but rather more distorted and disoriented.

How to get the ‘real reality’? The keyword is to listen, without prejudice, on what others want to say, to convey. Don’t simply draw into conclusion on half-baked facts, or others’ opinions. Listening is a very powerful tools, let he or she say with full heart. Then you will feel the ‘real reality’ not only on his/her part, but also inside yourself.

We are now in the month of July. In this month, Muslims are observing Ramadhan, a full month of fasting. Muslims believe that the month of Ramadhan is the best month to seek forgiveness, doing good deeds and to enhance our understanding about Islam, including improving the practices and rituals.

Of course, doing good deeds and practising the true way of Islam is not limit only in the month of Ramadhan. We are required to improvise ourselves from day to day, ultimately to become a good Muslim if not a perfect one. Ramadhan is the best platform of doing good deeds since the rewards are multiplied and appreciations are abundant.

My dearest friends,

It is said that our life is actually a cycle of events – in other words, all that happened are actually reflection of our past experiences, just it happened slightly different. You may not agree with me, but on my personal observation and first-hand experiences, I firmly subscribe to this idea. A friend of mine said this refers to ‘karma’, but I think it is more that just a karma.

Our life is a vast timeline, that began when we were born and continuously moving forward until the day when we no longer breathe – dead. In between the start and the end, we fill up the timeline with our actions, our thinking, our perceptions about situations, and other triggers that will affect the neighbouring timeline (our relatives, our friends, our co-workers, etc.).

Muslim believes that all of us has a predetermined script of life, in which we commonly call the Qada’ and Qadar. This script is the basis of our actions that shapes the situations, but we also are given the power to choose, based on our knowledge. There are certain things in the script that permanent is nature and hidden from us – one of it, is the date when we will die.

My dearest friends,

We are given options, but the problem is not on the options per say. We can select any of the options, and each of it has distinctive consequences. The consequences, or outcomes, are the thing that we are afraid of, regardless we are optimist or pessimist in nature. No one wants unfavorable consequences. Do you?

Therefore, to choose the best and right option is a challenge by itself. How confident we are, in holding firm with our chosen option. Are we ready to face the consequences, reactions, retaliation, lost, shame, etc. for the sake of betterment, a good future? There is a saying – When there is no clear option(s), the best thing is to do nothing. For short term, this might work, but sitting idle will not solve the issue since time is moving forward and a firm decision must be made.

My dearest friends,

This 10th of July will be the complete one-year term I am in Yayasan Basmi Kemiskinan (YBK), the beautiful organization that I worked for. A year here means a lot – accumulated knowledge, experiences, observations and sharing. Yes, it seems there is a cycle of unfavourable events, but thank to Allah S.W.T. it is not severe as before. Experiences make us more mature and rational. We are travelling forward in our timeline and arguing on past misunderstanding will not solve anything. The past arguments are our learning process.

The situation has changed. The plan must be changed. The approach need reworking. Re-strategized. If life is indeed a cycle of events, then we must ready for adapting change(s). The move must be made.

There are many types of investments, all of those have risks and the ultimate outcome is either success or failure. Investment is not like flipping a coin, not a game of chance but of course, it involves luck as part of the game.

Lets examine this particular company.

This company, your ultimate objective is to acquire it. You have monitored the company, and it seems attractive. You bet your future on this company, you believe it will generate the best rate of return. You began invested on it, you buy a small unit of stock at first.

Then, you gradually increase your share. You invest slowly, you read the market sentiments, the stakeholders’ opinion, the past history, and you are certain that this is the best company and will never turn back. Although the history has some challenging period, but it makes the company stronger.

As time goes, you acquire good sentiments, and deep trust of other stakeholders’ and shareholders. You’re waiting the right time to announce preliminary offer to acquire, and this particular time is critical – you execute it at wrong time, you risk losing part (if not all) your investment.

You voice your intention to the major stakeholder, and somehow they agree with your offer, but gives you some conditions to proceed – they want to see your commitment by investing in special project that has fixed length of time, and want you to manage the project together with the company.

You did it with flying colours during the stipulated time, and the major shareholder agree with you offer to acquire the company. A special meeting then being held, where the major shareholder hand over the ownership to you, and trust you to safeguard the company, make it better over time, and expand it further with new branches.

The major shareholder is the one who founded the company, nurtured it, developed it to be competitive like others, and of course, when handing over to you, it is an emotional atmosphere all over.

Your fulfilled your objective, your patient and investments paid off. Now the responsibility is on your shoulder, to elevate the company to the next level.

Remember, not all investors can reach this level, with some luck and determination, you did it. Some investors stopped during hard time and abandoned it, some failed because major shareholder voted against the acquisition. Be thankful if you reach this level, it is a challenging game.

You guys, like me, is the INVESTOR, and there are a lot of other investors who keen to acquire the company too!

The company: WOMAN
The major shareholder: HER PARENTS, SIBLINGS, FAMILY MEMBERS
The stakeholder: FRIENDS, ACQUAINTANCE, ADVISORS

Life is an investment. Invest wisely, and never give up. However, the ultimate outcome depends on our destiny, which in return, originated from Allah S.W.T. as the Master Planner.

Browsing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social network channels, I am amazed with my friends’ updates. Some of them is a proud father or mother. Some of them will getting engaged or soon to be married. Some of them earning a highly paid salary with respectable position in their company. Some of them had completed their Masters or PhD. Success stories and happiness for them. Alhamdulillah!

Reading those updates serve as ‘gentle’ reminder for myself that I already reach the ‘tipping point’ of my life – the need to move to the next stage. Proceed to the next stage requires me to fulfill certain requirements, and somehow I failed to fulfill those during stipulated time. This year seems to be the most challenging as I faced many obstacles and failures that were beyond my control. I lost a ‘secure’ position in an Agency in order to uphold my integrity; I lost some close friends due to misunderstanding; and the biggest of all, I lost my partner. The Malay proverb to describe this is ‘Sudah Jatuh Ditimpa Tangga’.

Those ‘turbulences’ indeed distrupt my planning and somehow affect my motivation and determination to move forward. The plan that I crafted since UIAM days is rendered invalid due to those unfavorable events. Nevertheless, I tried to be strong and slowly accepted the fact that we cannot guarantee success although we carefully executed and monitored the plan. The end result is still subject to Allah S.W.T. approval and blessing.

Alhamdulillah, the distruptive events actually a blessing in disguise. I learn to view things from different perspectives, and understand that ‘true friends’ are indeed very rare to find. Only a few, very few, that stood by me during hardship and they give me valuable advices and motivation. Loyalty and faithfullness, is good in theory, but in practice, it is hard to uphold. Being loyal to someone does not meant he or she will return the favor intact – there are many third parties that insist to destroy the relationship and gain advantage(s) over it.

My failure in relationship, is the most valuable experience. I will not blame my former partner, as I also have some share of mistakes that might contribute to the failure. You may call me a naive, no harm on that. Love is volatile, a complicated matter. You can try to simplify it but feeling is not subject to simplification – it is dynamic. I value a relationship as an ‘amanah’ (responsibility) and maybe because of this, when it as not worked as expected, it really disturbed me. It is worth to note that our partner is a human, and he/she is subject to external intervention that might change his/her loyalty and faithfullness.

I am undeterred. Although I failed to hold the premise that long-range relationship is possible to last long, but I will not change, rather drastically, my what so called ‘Look East Coast Policy’ (LECP). LECP is a master plan which outline my preference for a partner from East Coast region, precisely, from Pahang, Terengganu or Kelantan. This plan does not mean I will ignore other region but it is just a matter of preference. LECP was drafted during my student days, and NOT after I graduated from UIAM as many believed. LECP is just my internal, personal plan, and if I found a woman from non-East Coast region that fulfill my criteria, I will consider.

Friends-turned-foes, a few nevertheless. Again, I always consider them as friends although some of them almost ‘destroyed’ my life. I honor their contributions, assistance, and advices. They are now against me, mostly for personal reason, and I will respect that. We have our own point of view, our perceptions towards some issues, but to leverage the differences as a claim to change a friendship into enemyship is not my way of doing thing. To those who give me a hope, a kind words, a meaningful dream to live together but later kill it with an instance shot, I will take no revenge, because I am always love you as a friend, a person that used to stand firmly besides me.

In conclusion, to move to the next level maybe takes a longer time now, and it is possible that I will be the last among my key friends who will get married. I am happy to see my friends enjoying life with their partner, family, and children. They have found happiness and hopefully will be everlasting. My journey for happiness and success will continue. Intimate relationship is not my highest priority now, as long as I have my family and few friends that always be on my side and shower me with wisdom and advice.

Regret? Yes, but life must go on. You cannot write a success story if you stay at the same spot. May Allah S.W.T. bless all of us. Ameen!